Stop The Scroll

All Indie authors know how important their book cover is when it comes to selling their book (if you didn’t, you do now). But images in general are vital when it comes to promoting books.
 
It’s no good having a great cover if you can’t get people to go and look at the book’s product page.

​Many authors use social media to direct people to product pages, but over recent years the effectiveness of this approach has declined. And there is a very good reason for that.
 
The key words I want you to remember from this blog are “Stop The Scroll”.
 
Did you know that the average social media user scrolls the equivalent to the height of the Eiffel Tower on their social media every day? 

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Just to put that in context, that’s the equivalent to 1,083 ft give or take the odd inch (330 metres to the tip of the radio mast). That is a lot of scrolling.
 
Social media users are continually scrolling, scrolling and scrolling as they search for the next thing to catch their attention.

Even when they stop scrolling they often don’t pay attention to a post for more than a few seconds. The average attention span for a post on social media is only 1.5 seconds according to research carried out by Linkedin.
 
When it comes to selling books, social media is what is called a “secondary source”. That means people don’t go onto it specifically to find books, the way they would on Amazon or one of the other book selling websites. They go on social media for different reasons.

​Which means that the challenge for the Indie author is even greater.

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The challenge is to stop the social media user from scrolling past their post for long enough to read the content and take an interest in the book, even though they aren’t looking for books to buy..
 
And it is a considerable challenge. They are in competition with cute kittens, people falling into rivers hilariously and pouting celebrities with big bottoms, for goodness sake.
 
Which means the imagery used in promotional posts has to be equally eye catching, if not more so. It literally has to make people say “Wow, I wonder what that’s all about?”.
 
So they have to stop scrolling for long enough to find out.
 
Did you know, you don’t actually have to put your book cover in your promotional imagery? In fact, it might even be counterproductive to do so.

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When people see a book cover in a post, they automatically think “Oh, just another author promoting their book” and they scroll past – even if they might actually enjoy reading the book.

​Because they’ve only looked at it for a fraction of a second they have no idea if it’s even in a genre they like to read.
 
But if they see an intriguing image that doesn’t feature a book cover, they may stop scrolling for just long enough to start reading the text that goes with it. And once they start reading the text they might just find out about a book they might be interested in.
 
For example:

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​If they see an image featuring a book cover with a dragon on it, they might think “Oh, just another fantasy author promoting their fantasy book” and scroll past because they’ve got a shelf full of fantasy books already.
 
But if they see an image of a dragon without a book cover, they might say “Oh, a dragon. I like dragons. I wonder why someone has posted an image of a dragon?”
 
Do you see how the psychology of that works?
 
Instead of saying “Here’s my fantasy book, please buy it.” the author is saying “Look here, I’ve got something interesting to say about dragons.”

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As a social media user, which approach would stop you from scrolling past?
 
Now, I’m not saying it will turn zero sales into millions of sales by itself. But if it gets you a few more clicks to the sales page of the book, then the sales page may do the rest of the work for you.
 
But if someone scrolls past your post because they think they don’t need another book, you get nothing.
 
So, what sorts of images will stop the scroll?
 
Two things mainly. One, they will be eye catching, making the viewer want to ask questions about them. Two, they will relate directly to the genre of the book.

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People are always looking for memes they can share, so putting some text with an image can also stop them from scrolling because they think the post may be a meme. Not the book title, but something related to the book. An extract from a review works well, especially if accompanied by a star rating*.

​Make sure you say “Reader Review” or “Amazon Review” etc. Other short text, eg “Jaw dropping adventure” also works.
 
Making different versions of the image and posting them on different days will attract the attention of different potential readers, so don’t be scared to try out different ideas. If you use the site’s metrics you’ll soon learn what works for your genre from the way people react to the posts.

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Try using variations of your images.

You can actually use elements from the book cover if they can stand by themselves, or you can create a scene that incorporates the cover  image (minus the title, author name etc). Photoshop, Canva, Bookbrush et al have tools to help you create interesting images. Just because you normally turn them into a book cover doesn’t mean you can’t also use them as a picture by themselves.

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This is one area where I have no qualms about suggesting that you use AI. It is the ideal tool to allow you to create genre specific images that result in professional quality pictures. I’ve played around with it and the image alongside this was created using AI.
 
Would you scroll past that?
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Well, to answer our own question, we posted two versions of it on a social media page. Version 1 included a book cover and version 2 didn’t. Both versions were accompanied by the same text, which was taken from the blurb for the book, plus a link to click on.
 
Version 2 got almost double the number of link clicks compared to version 1.
 
So, dear reader, what are you going to do to “Stop The Scroll” past your book promotions?
 
* Please don’t make up review extracts or fake star ratings. Readers may check them out and if they do they may make adverse comments on the original post, which will undo all your good work. I know you would never do that, but I thought I’d better say it anyway.
 
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